Monumental Histories: Manliness, the Military, and the War Memorial

Sheila Miyoshi Jager

The notion of national rebirth is further enhanced by the strategic placement of the Statue of Brothers in relation to the other objects within the War Memorial complex. Standing to the right of the memorial at the opposite end of the Statue of Brothers is a reproduction of the large memorial stele to King Kwanggaet’o the Great (the original stands in Jian City, Jilin Prefecture, China), perhaps the most celebrated king of the kingdom of Koguryŏ. Engraved on the four sides are the mythical story of the founding of Koguryŏ, the meritorious deeds of Kwanggaet’o the Great, and the rules for the care of the tomb. Erected by King Kwanggaet’o’s son, King Changsu, in a.d. 414 in order to commemorate his father’s great national achievements, the stele takes on a newly significant commemorative role at the War Memorial. Although it stands for Korea’s heroic national past, the stele also announces the nation’s glorious “rebirth.” Likewise, in its celebration of a victorious present, the War Memorial creates both a past and a future of a mythologized Koguryŏ history that honors the heroic dead as much as the living and the unborn. The triangular placement of these objects— the Statue of Brothers, the War Memorial, and the stele to King Kwanggaet’o the Great—within the memorial complex symbolizes a tripartite series of coupled elements: past and present, past and future, history and national “rebirth.” The triangular scheme of this monumental complex demonstrates the state’s vision of history and the nation on a geographic plane. Just as the future of a unified Korea finds its legacy in the Silla (left side of complex), so the future of the vigorous, “manly” nation-state is modeled after the Koguryŏ (right side of complex). Past meets future in the moment of a victorious present.

Notes

An earlier and much shorter version of this essay appeared in Museum Anthropology 21, no. 3 (1997): 33–39. Support for this work was provided by an American Council of Learned Societies/ Social Science Research Council postdoctoral fellowship and grants from the Korea Foundation, the Asia Research Fund, and the Daesan Foundation. For their assistance, I extend my sincere thanks to Chang Chŏng-dok, Kim Yŏng-nam, Lee Sung-kwan and Choi Young-jeep. Many thanks to my husband, Jiyul Kim, as always, for his detailed readings, astute critique, and boundless support. Romanization of Korean has followed the McCune-Reishauer system but some of the proper names have retained their own idiosyncratic spellings due to personal preference.

1. In July 1953, North Korea, China, and the United States signed an armistice agreement (South Korea refused to be a signatory). There was no peace treaty signed among the participants.
2. A good example is the inauguration of the second Saemaul Undong (New Community Movement) and the Second Nation-Building Movement (Chae 2?ui kŏnkuk) in 1998, both of which were modeled after successful national campaign movements initiated by former president Park Chung-hee in the 1970s. In addition, Kim’s ebullient praise of Park Chung-hee, which came just two days before the thirty-seventh anniversary of Park’s 16 May 1961 coup d’état, was viewed as a historical revaluation of Park’s place in Korean history. Further efforts to “make peace” with past military leaders was displayed in the dispatch of President Kim Dae-Jung’s junior coalition partner, Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil, to Kwangju for a ceremony commemorating the nineteenth anniversary of the Kwanjgu Uprising on 18 May 1999. Kim Dae-Jung also initiated a plan to build a memorial hall to honor former President Park at Saugon-doug that is currently under construction in western Seoul.
3. The Righteous Army here refers to the guerrilla forces that sprang up against the Japanese army led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1592; the Independence Army refers to the guerrilla army (also referred to as ?uiby?ong) raised against the Japanese shortly after the assassination of Queen Min in 1895, and the Restoration Army refers to the Korean Provincial Government (KPG)—and Kuomintang- allied—Army, whose officers later came to dominate the top levels of the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA).
4. Admiral Yi Sun-sin, naval commander of the Left Chŏlla province, rallied the nation to defeat the Japanese invasion forces led by Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi ended Japan’s internal disorder and unified the country. He launched an invasion of Korea in May 1592, but the eventual goal was to overtake Ming China.
5. According to the record of Korean graduates from the Japanese Army Officer Military Academy, all of those who pursued a military career entered the South Korean military—many of them occupying key positions in the ROK military in the 1940s through the 1960s—and none went to North Korea. See Lee Ki-dong 1982.
6. The exhibition plan instructs: “Quickly get over the fact that the Korean War was an act of provocation by North Korea. . . . Present clearly with actual evidence that the Korean War was an illegal attack by North Korean communists who received support from the Soviet Union” (KWMOC 1990: 342).